The Web Wide World of Jon Hoevenaars

What question is your research answering?

That’s a very good question. Thanks for asking.

My research seeks to answer the question of how personal stories can be recorded through oral history in video documentary form.

How effectively can a broadcast medium portray accurate reaccounts of history without having been there in the moment?

Can reproduced images and sounds contribute to the “authenticity” of oral history? And do stories gain credibility when they are retold by those who experienced them first-hand?

Specifically, my project will attempt to publically portray the personal anecdotes of those who lived and worked at Melbourne’s docks and on the boats that frequented them. Hence, it will also be necessary to answer the question of who these people were and how they spent their working lives.

Introduction

The National Trust has won a grant through the Local History Grants Program to complete an oral history project for the Melbourne Maritime Museum.

I have volunteered my services as a media producer to help develop the project for the Trust and to provide me with an honours project that allows for a practical media outcome and research into broadcast media production and oral history documentary.

Objectives

The practical aims of the project are to capture a history of Melbourne’s waterfront for archival purposes and for display to the public at the forthcoming Maritime Museum or Polly Woodside.

The theoretical aims of the project is to conduct research into the practice of oral history video documentary making for public exhibition and other spaces.

Duties

1. Research documentary practice and oral history.
2. Research interview subjects and their histories.
3. Investigate potential shooting locations.
4. Liaise with the National Trust and interview subjects to organise a shoot schedule.
5. Coordinate control and location shoots.
6. Record vision and audio of inteview shoots.
7. Investigate overlay vision and assisting footage.
8. Oversee post-production of video footage.

Research Methods

Voices from the Waterfront requires a variety of research methods for different purposes:

1. Primary research will be conducted to gain an understanding of Melbourne’s maritime history. The process will begin during the informal telephone interview stage where we begin to assess possible interviewees and their stories. It will then evolve into the formal interview process where we uncover the stories from our participants’ past lives and record them on video.
2. Secondary research will be conducted to complement the outcomes of the primary research. This would include locating archival documents and artefacts such as letters, postcards, telegraphs, photographs and personal objects currently in the possession of our interviewees.
3. Action research will occur naturally as an outcome of the project itself. It will involve me examining the concept of documentary through reflections on my personal experience of the project. Critique of my own project will enable me to closely examine problems of documentary and attempt to find specific resolutions to them.
4. Professional research will be conducted in order to assess the specifications of the project outcome. I will need to conduct some research into the screening location of my work, by looking at existing projects and assessing an appropriate running time and in what style it should be produced.

Style

Voices from the Waterfront is strictly an oral history documentary project using the subject of Melboune’s maritime history as a vehicle for research. Its practical outcome is a series of mini video documentaries that record and retell the memories of former maritime workers.

The style of the project is emotionally evocative while still maintaining a serious and professional exterior. It picks apart the past lives of maritime workers and prods their memories at a broader human interest level rather than at a level more exclusive to the maritime sub-culture.

The interview style will be relaxed but informative. Instead of asking complex questions about the inner workings of a ship and getting stuck down in maritime jargon, the conversation will be captivating for the average person.

Content

Voices from the Waterfront intends to show ordinary Melburnians what the life on the docks used to be like. Each mini-documentary will conentrate on the life of one person and their separate experiences in the maritime industry. Talent could include but is not limited to:

• harbour master
• harbour control
• pilot
• agent
• stevedore
• surveyor/classification society
• naval archivist
• tug master
• lines boatman
• customs
• immigration
• chandler
• ship captain
• ship engineer
• ship deck crew
• ship caterer
• engine crew
• drydock manager
• wharfie

Topics will cover the human interest elements of the interviewees former working lives, including:

• incident of greatest personal pride
• scariest memory
• skills acquired
• funniest memory
• funniest colleague
• working hours conditions
• description of working environment
• machinery/equipment used on the wharves
• biggest insurance cliams
• transport of passengers/cargo in the port
• strikes/workforce reductions
• union representatives
• payday
• worst cargoes/ships/shifts
• wharfie gangs
• health and safety

Aesthetic

Aesthetically, the videos will be along the same lines as Australian Story - structured around an interview in which the interviewee recalls events from their past, but complemented with other overlay vision and archival material. Limited graphics and special effects will be implemented into the production, keeping in line with our intention to let the story tell the story.

Existing works

• Australian Story

Format/Length

Each mini documentary will be an independent multimedia file (video and audio) of between five and ten minutes in length. All will be shot in widescreen (16:9) to allow for a more appropriate adaption to modern screen conventions.

The series of mini documentaries will be produced with the intention of public exhibition at National Trust venues and locations across Melbourne. Hence, they will need to be of professional broadcast quality and be of a standard of work appropriate for public viewing.

Outcomes

Voices from the Waterfront will be the title of the exhibition in which these mini documentaries will appear. Depending on the situation with the Maritime Museum, the documentaries will be available for public viewing at specific National Trust locations across Melbourne. Most importantly, the documentaries will be part of a public exhibition on board the Polly Woodside boat currently docked near the Exhibition Centre.

One aspect worth considering in my project will be the concept of “exhibition space” and how it can contribute to someone’s experience of a video project. I will think about what sort of features I can incorporate to highten the emotional experience of the viewer by what they see and hear and by what is happening around them in the exhibition space. It may also be worth investigating the possibility of interactivity in the exhibition to enhance the experience.

Expectations

I expect to produce material for public exhibition and as a permanent archival record. Issues to be considered are:

• quality and relevance of story telling
• technical standard of video/audio
• amount of material recorded

Application to Project

This project is a practical research study of documentary and oral history. Each stage of the project will require some form of research into the methodology of documentary making or the subject I am dealing with - Melbourne’s maritime history.

Ideally, the progression from start to finish will portray a development of understanding about documentary through research I undertake. Each stage of the documentary-making process will be discussed as I become more and more familiar with the end result.

The project is starting to take some preliminary shape. I have been working with Martin Green from the National Trust and Andrew Godden who is also lending his assistance to Voices from the Waterfront.

Andrew has been busy organising interview talent for the documentaries while I’ve been seeking out locations and organising the ethics approval statement.

We’ve also been discussing some ideas for the production of the documentaries: where the interviews could be shot, what overlay footage we could use, whether we could obtain some artefacts or historical documents to assist the interviews and who our priorities for interview are.

I hadn’t yet considered the prospect that many of the people we intend to interview are quite old and in poor health. Being able to prioritise our interviews and conducting them safely and efficiently are vital to the project.

Together, we decided that the questions we ask our interviewees should be fairly generic so that the same questions can be asked to people of separate professions. Some of the topics we want to cover are:

• Incident of greatest personal pride
• Scariest memory
• Skills acquired
• Funniest memory
• Funniest colleague
• Working hours conditions
• Description of working environment
• Machinery/equipment used on the wharves
• Biggest insurance cliams
• Transport of passengers/cargo in the port
• Strikes/workforce reductions
• Union representatives
• Payday
• Worst cargoes/ships/shifts
• Wharfie gangs
• Health and safety

I’m working on finishing the ethics statement and a release form for our interviewees to sign before we proceed with the production phase.

Logistically, we need to find shoot locations that are well lit and have relevant visuals but are relatively sound-proof or at least free from sounds not relevant to our production content.

My next task is to make a list of comments and observations about how qualitative research may be relevant (or not) to my own project Voices from the Waterfront.

Now that I’ve established what QR is and what it seeks to achieve, I can now start to predict how it might be used in my project.

• to establish the most interesting types of people to interview in the documentaries
• to understand more about the jobs people undertook at the Waterfront
• to find out from my interview subjects about what their past lives were like

In fact, as a journalism/story-based project, a lot of the research I do will be qualititative. It will be conducted in the moment with no preconceived outcome. I will be involved in the research as an interviewer delving into the stories of my subjects as I see appropriate. The responses I get won’t be able to be graphed or shown as any form of statistical data. We might stray into areas I hadn’t expected to cover. Essentially, the direction of the research will be determined by the information I am given during the interview process.

Consider the old adage: quality versus quantity. When I’m hungry, I choose the latter every day. I don’t particularly need to know what’s in the food. I don’t care what goes into me so long as it fills me up.

But sometimes it’s important to consider what we’re consuming rather than simply how much. Qualitative research is a technique that does exactly this. For the benefit of simplicity, from now on I’ll refer to qualitative research as QR.

It seems to me QR is a very thorough and integrated method of assessing a subject. It doesn’t just find out answers, it finds out the reasons for the answers and what inspires them. QR doesn’t just observe and record behaviour, it goes the extra step to find out what provokes that behaviour. Where quantitative research accounts for what, where and when, QR goes a step further to deduce why and how something happens.

QR uses the following four methods to gather information:

1. Participation in the setting;
2. Direct observation;
3. In-depth interviews; and
4. Analysis of documents and material

My friend Wikipedia tells me that one way QR can be distinguished from quantitative research is by its objectives. Quantitative research seeks to come to a conclusion or find a concrete answer to its question. Its mission is to state a problem and have that resolved by the end of the research process.

QR, on the other hand, is far more exploratory. It allows for digressions, diversions and unanticipated movements. It’s multi-faceted unlike its cousin and cannot be measured, counted or displayed in a graph.

It appears there is an Association for Qualitative Research (AQR). I’m not sure I’d like to work for them. In a sentence, this is what the AQR has to say about QR.

Qualitative research provides often an unparalleled understanding of the motivations behind human behaviour, desires and needs.

Seems to make something very complex sound very simple. I hope I can do the same.

Melburnians are unaware of the history of those who have lived and worked at Melbourne’s Docklands. How can we increase awareness of our industrial culture and promote better understanding of how this city was established?

To be honest, I don’t really know the answer myself. It might help to break it down into smaller questions:

Is it worth asking?

Any question/problem could be deemed worthy of being answered. Every question we ask must affect something or somebody. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have the means to ask/state it in the first place.

Who is it relevant for?

It’s relevant for all Melburnians. Though, they might not know it.

Why is it relevant?

It’s very important that Melburnians understand and appreciate their history and culture. The industry formed at Docklands played an important role in forming the Melbourne we live in today.

Is the problem viable?

It’s the sort of problem that could be increasingly “resolved” over time. It’s not a one-fix project but certainly each video documentary produced would promote insight into the lives of those from the Melbourne waterfront.

How will it contribute to future endeavours?

I predict this project will provide Melburnians with a visual history class on their city’s industrial culture. It will be a drawcard for the National Trust and it could have the potential to open up doors for the education sector in Victoria. Many positives can be born from this project.

Certainly on a personal level, the outcome of a practical project such as this will do wonders for future employment opportunities. Collaboration with the National Trust will allow me to be working alongside a professional team well recognised in society. Ideally, the project will also provide exposure of the project into the public domain. This will enable me to show employers what sort of work I am capable of producing in a team environment.

I was just down in the basement of building 6. Thought I saw someone I knew and gave them the thumbs up from a distance. Here is an annotated version of the conversation that ensued as I walked towards him. My words are in standard text and my thoughts in italics.

Stranger (from a distance): Hey man. How are you?

Me (approaching stranger): Yeah, good thanks. How you going? Who the hell are you?

Stranger (starting to look puzzled): Not bad. What have you been up to?

Me (still trying to pretend I knew him): Not much. Just working on my honours project. I’ve never seen you in my life. Why do you care about my honours project?

Stranger (he must have realised by now): Oh, cool.

By this stage, I was right next to him at the Technical Services desk. To divert the attention, I leaned in and asked if Lachlan was in today, knowing full well he wasn’t working. Then I just walked off without saying goodbye to my new stranger friend.

Ahh, the ironies of studying Professional Communication.

Many people are unaware of the stories of those who have lived and worked at the Melbourne Docklands throughout this city’s long industrial history.

Neglect or disinterest means many people can’t appreciate an important element of Melbourne’s heritage: the seaport and the industry it provides.

Melburnians would benefit from a visual portrayal of the stories from our waterfront’s history through the medium of video documentary which would be on permanent public display at the newly-commissioned Melbourne Maritime Museum.

Insight into Melbourne’s history promotes a better understanding and appreciation of the city we live in and the culture we share.

Don’t think, don’t hope, do!

Do something!

So goes the famous quote by former Hawthorn coach John Kennedy in a team address during the 1975 VFA Grand Final.

Anyone who runs out onto a football ground and tells their direct opponent that they will kick three goals straight during the game is shooting themself in the foot.

That’s my way of saying I don’t like to be over-confident. I’m quietly aware of my own abilities and enjoy being recognised for them but I’ve never been a bar-pusher.

Honours is significant for me in a number of ways:

• It is a legitimate way of compensating for Prof Comm’s lack of a necessary fourth year.
• It provides me some ‘career-pondering’ time while I continue to use my tertiary-learned skills.
• It provides a solid platform to work on further developing a practical folio of work in whichever field I choose.
• It means I can stay in Melbourne for at least another year.

 Having said that, here are three goals I would like to kick this year:

1. Produce a professional project that will develop my broadcast media skills and impress potential employers.
2. Engage in some clearer understanding of the importance of communication theory.
3. Find my calling within the field of broadcast media and be confident in my decision.

Come off the ground and say ‘I did this, I shepherded, I played on. At least I did something.’

I’ve always wondered about the re in research. When I type a word into Google, I don’t click research; I just click search.

Speaking of which, here’s what Google has to say about research.

• inquire into
• systematic investigation to establish facts
• attempt to find out in a systematically and scientific manner
• inquiry: a search for knowledge

Apparently, research derives from the French word recherche (from rechercher), which means “to search closely” or “to investigate thoroughly”.

I think this definition is particularly relevant for us as university students.

Research is a key feature of most university courses. Research involves collecting information about a subject from a variety of sources including books, journals and the Internet or by carrying out experiments or talking to people and analysis of this information.

Here is a list of types of research that we came up with in class on Thursday:

• market research
• quantitative research
• qualitative research
• applied research
• theory research
• action research
• basic research
• primary research
• secondary research

My group was instructed to research qualitative research. Here are some facts about it:

• concerned with understanding the processes, which underlie various behavioural patterns.
• a body of research techniques which seeks insights through loosely structured, mainly verbal data rather than measurements. Analysis is interpretative, subjective, impressionistic and diagnostic.
• a way to study people or systems by interacting with and observing the subjects regularly.
• research into how an investment’s results were achieved including the quality of the people, strategies, systems and infrastructure that achieved them.
• research that is subjective and does not rely on statistical analysis, such as a focus group.
• an exploratory study (to explore an unknown sector, identify the main dimensions of a problem, draw assumptions, understand motivations) or operational study based on in-depth analysis of interviewee responses (in a group or individually), typically in what’s known as “focus groups.

I’ve been assigned to research how you go about conducting qualitative research and its associated methodologies.

It seems a key attribute of qualitative research is rather than being based on hard statistics and concerned with quantities, it surveys a group to determine information from a deeper or more complex level. It’s less concerned with checking boxes and more concerned with finding out what makes them checked.

Instead of handing around a series of Y/N questions to a large group of people as you might when conducting quantitative research, you would have to do a little bit more preparation when undertaking qualitative research.

There are no pre-determined answers per se, no boxes to be shaded or numbers to be circled. Instead, qualitative research enables the researcher to gain detailed or more personal insight into a topic. You might ask an open question and record each of the different responses.

For this reason, qualitative research restricts a researcher from being able to compile results in a structured and organised manner. Interpretation of qualitative data is subjective and is at risk of being misinterpreted.

While qualitative research cannot provide concrete statistics or figures relating to a survey group, it can be of great use where extra feedback is required. When conducted alongside quantitative research, it it is a powerful tool that can provide a researcher with a strong cross-section of group opinion.